A plan to insist that car makers should ship products that allowed each car to talk to each other so that their computers could avoid collisions has been scrapped by Donald "Prince of Orange" Trump.

It was not that the idea, which was suggested under President Obama did not have the backing of car makers. In fact they said it was one of the most promising technologies for preventing traffic deaths.Vehicle-to-vehicle communications, or V2V would enable vehicles to transmit their location, speed, direction and other information 10 times per second. That lets cars detect, for example, when another vehicle is about to run a red light or coming around a blind turn in time to prevent a crash.

The White House has dropped the idea from the White House Office of Management and Budget’s list of regulations actively under consideration. Instead it has been "filed" for a day when "hell freezes over" or "pigs fly".

Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao’s office forwarded a statement from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration which said the agency is still reviewing more than 460 comments on the proposed mandate before deciding its next step and that no final decision has been made. Industry officials said decisions on the matter are being made at higher levels of the administration.

Administration officials indicated their decision was based on several factors, including general wariness of imposing costly mandates on industry, even though most automakers support requiring V2V, industry officials said. President Donald Trump has made reducing government regulations, which he sees as a drain on the economy, a guiding principle of his administration.

The Transportation Department estimates the technology has the potential to prevent or reduce the severity of up to 80 percent of collisions that don’t involve alcohol or drugs. V2V was also expected to provide an extra layer of safety for self-driving cars since it can detect even vehicles hidden by buildings or beyond the range of the sensors and cameras of autonomous vehicles. And it was expected to ease traffic congestion since vehicles could communicate with traffic signals, turning them green to prevent needless waiting, save fuel and reduce emissions.

V2V is one of the “most important tools” for reducing traffic fatalities, but the Trump administration “is locking it in the trunk if they’re not going to put out the mandate”, said Deborah Hersman, president of the National Safety Council, a congressionally chartered advocacy group. “The only way you’re going to get it adopted and deployed in a widespread manner is by having a mandate.”

Apparently the delay is all the Obama administration's fault because it waited years to propose the mandate.Another reason administration officials are allowing the V2V proposal to languish is strong opposition from the cable and tech industries. The government set aside the 5.9 GHz spectrum band for transportation technologies in 1999. It went unused while the government and automakers spent over a decade and more than $1 billion developing and testing V2V.

Spectrum is finite and in short supply. Cable and tech companies have been seeking permission to use the 5.9 GHz spectrum for additional wireless bandwidth. Automakers say they need the entire 5.9 GHz spectrum for V2V and other safety uses.

The Federal Communications Commission has been conducting tests to see if the spectrum can be shared without interfering with the safety signals. The first test results are expected to be released soon.

Automakers wanted the mandate partly because it would establish V2V protocols to ensure that Fords could talk to Toyotas which could talk to Volkswagens, and so on.

The mandate was also intended to get the technology onto roads faster. It called for half of new vehicles to have V2V within two years after a final rule was issued, and all new vehicles within four years. The more vehicles equipped with V2V, the more collisions that could be avoided. It would still take many years before there were enough vehicles with V2V to reap the technology’s full promise. That might be accelerated by after-market devices that would bring V2V to older vehicles.

Automakers can put V2V in vehicles without a mandate. General Motors has put the technology in its Cadillac CTS sedans. Toyota has put V2V in vehicles in Japan and Volkswagen plans to put it in cars in Europe starting in 2019. But it will be more difficult for automakers to protect the 5.9 GHz spectrum and deployment will be far slower without a mandate, industry officials said.

Some European manufacturers say they want V2V, but it might be better to wait super-fast 5G cellular technology to achieve it instead of currently available technology. But 5G is still being developed. Years of testing would be required after it’s ready before it could go into cars.

Still while governments sit around with their fingers in their ears going la la la people will die. But it is not as if the world does not have enough people.

The outfit which claimed to be making an Android killer and failed, is now getting a licence to make self-driving cars.

According to Biz Journals, Cyngn has changed its name from Cyanogen and recently got a permit to test its self-driving tech on California roads.

The cunning new plan is being led by Lior Tal, the former chief operating officer who took over as CEO last year when the outfit’s cunning plan to kill off Android went tits up.

No new funding has been disclosed for the reinvented company. It lists on its website investors who backed it before it pivoted, including Andreessen Horowitz, Benchmark Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Index Ventures, Qualcomm and Chinese social networking company Tencent.

The company was the centre of acquisition talk in 2014, when companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Samsung and Yahoo expressed interest in the company.

The new company says on its website that its goal is to develop "purpose-driven autonomy".

"Very soon autonomous machines will be everywhere, in surprising places, exciting new form factors both unexpected and delightful," it says. "Cyngn is bringing this world to life, animating the inanimate and delivering the future now."

Completely driverless cars could be tested in the Phoenix area by the end of the year.

According to The Information, two anonymous sources say that Google's self-driving car unit, Waymo, is preparing to launch "a commercial ride-sharing service powered by self-driving vehicles with no human 'safety' drivers as soon as this fall".

Obviously, there's no guarantee that Waymo will hit this ambitious target. But it's a sign that Waymo believes its technology is very close to being ready for commercial use. And it suggests that Waymo is likely to introduce a fully driverless car network in 2018 if it doesn't do so in the remaining months of 2017.

Waymo's service is likely to launch first in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb where Waymo has done extensive testing. Waymo chose the Phoenix area for its favorable weather, its wide, well-maintained streets, and the relative lack of pedestrians. Another important factor was the legal climate. Arizona has some of the nation's most permissive laws regarding self-driving vehicles. Arizona's oversight group has met just twice in the last year, and found no reason to suggest any new rules or restrictions on autonomous vehicles, so long as they follow traffic laws. The group found no need to suggest legislation to help the deployment.

According to the Arizona Republic, a 2015 executive order from Gov. Doug Ducey "allows universities to test vehicles with no driver on board so long as a licensed driver has responsibility for the cars and can take control remotely if the vehicle needs assistance". Waymo is getting ready to take the same approach.

Of course this level of testing will never provide a workable solution which would be safe to use in Italy, Bulgaria, Egypt or India where the central problem are the human drivers, who are the worst in the world.

Global automakers have urged China to delay and soften planned quotas for sales of electric and hybrid cars.

They claim, despite the technology being available since 1832, moving to electric engines so quickly would be impossible and would severely disrupt their businesses.

The June 18 letter addressed to the head of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, is the most cohesive pushback yet from the industry against ambitious targets for so-called new energy vehicles in the world's biggest auto market.

China is planning to set goals for electric and plug-in hybrid cars to make up at least a fifth of Chinese auto sales by 2025, with a staggered system of quotas beginning in 2018.

However what appears to have got the big carmarkers' goat is that China sees this as an opportunity to bring in its own car makers who are handicapped by their rivals experience in internal combustion engines. Chinese manufacturers are the biggest producers of electric vehicles worldwide, making 43 percent of the total last year, according to consultancy McKinsey & Co.

The strict new rules plus planned harsh penalties for non-compliance, such as the cancellation of licences to sell non-electric cars in China, has the potential to cause much pain for some automakers in the market.

Although Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed last month that concessions would be made, the ministry later released draft regulations upholding the strict sales quotas.

"The proposed rules' ambitious enforcement date is not possible to meet," the letter from US, European, Japanese and Korean auto industry bodies said.

The targets demand firms sell electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles to generate "credits" equivalent to 8 percent of total sales by 2018, 10 percent by 2019 and 12 percent by 2020.

The auto industry bodies also asked for China to reconsider some of the penalties for not achieving the quotas, such as plans to ban carmakers from importing and producing non-new energy vehicles altogether.

They also called for equal treatment of Chinese and foreign makers. Currently foreign carmakers are excluded from getting full subsidies for new energy vehicles and batteries, leaving manufacturers such as Tesla at a disadvantage.

"This preference for domestic automakers over import automakers undermines the environmental goals of the regulation, puts imports at a competitive disadvantage, and risks opening China up to international trade disputes," the letter said.

The letter was signed by the American Automotive Policy Council, the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association and the Korea Automobile Manufacturers Association.

However other carmakers see this as a challenge. Daimler have responded to the Chinese proposals by announcing plans to ramp up local production of electric cars, while Tesla has said it is in talks with the Shanghai Municipal government to try to avoid a 25 percent tariff on imported vehicles.

Foreign manufacturers also want more credit given to plug-in hybrid cars, and for carmakers to be allowed to "bank" credits accrued from already sold cars as well as to "carry forward" credits into subsequent model years.

California has become the first US state to allow the testing of automatic cars without a driver behind the wheel.

Most US states require a driver to be behind the wheel of driverless cars in case they need to take over in case of emergency. Some US states require a man on a horse with a red flag to go in front of the car during testing. Of course having a bloke behind the wheel makes no real odds. If there is an emergency they have to put down their book, put the cover back on their coffee, press pause on their video and then react to the crisis the robot could not handle.

A bill signed into law on Thursday by California Governor Jerry Brown allows a self-driving vehicle with no operator inside to test on a public road, a key step enabling a private business park outside San Francisco to test driverless shuttles.

The bill introduced by Democratic Assemblywoman Susan Bonilla allows testing in Contra Costa County northeast of San Francisco of the first full-autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel, brakes, accelerator or operator. When we say they don’t have breaks, we mean the sorts of breaks that need feet.

A project at the Bishop Ranch office park in the city of San Ramon to deploy driverless shuttles from French company Easymile had been on hold pending passage of the bill. Easymile already operates the shuttles in Europe.

New legislation was necessary because although driverless vehicles can be tested on private land like the office park, the shuttle will cross a public road on its loop through the campus.

The new law means that two cube-like Easymile shuttles that travel no faster than 25 mph (40 kph) will be tested for a period of up to six months before being deployed and used by people.

The fruity tax dodger Apple has pulled out of the race to build self-driving cars because the industry was not doing what it was told.

Apple’s Project Titan, which was only ever mentioned in the company’s favourite newspapers, has been changed.

Apparently all those working on Apple’s self-driving car have been fired and whole sections connected with the project have also been forced to clean out their desks.

According to New York Times sources, who have been briefed but cannot go public with what they’ve been told, Apple is retrenching and the self-driving car is one of the biggest projects to be scrapped.

For two years Apple hired and reassigned over 1,000 employees to work on the car project. It picked up automotive industry veterans and experts in battery technology and machine vision.

According to the Tame Apple Press the reason pulling out of the programme was because Apple could not make it “special”. However, like most examples of Apple spin, the story is simpler and darker. Apple had no experience working in the car industry and depended on finding a partner in the car industry who was prepared to do what it was told. Unfortunately for Apple, its negotiations with people who made cars did not go well. They would not be bullied at all and actually knew much more than Jobs’ Mob.

Apple continued developing the project even when it knew that it would either have to start making the cars itself, which would be a disaster, or pull out completely. Then in July, Bob Mansfield, a veteran Apple executive who had worked closely with Steve Jobs, was brought back to take over the self-driving car project.

According to Bloomberg he ordered that the initiative prioritising the development of an autonomous driving system. Although Bloomberg said Apple is not abandoning efforts to design its own vehicle, pulling the plug now would mean it would take Jobs’ Mob years to get back into the race.

Meanwhile Mansfield hopes that once Apple has designed its driving system the car makers will eventually see sense and go for it. The New York Times sources said Apple told employees the recent layoffs were due to a “reboot” of the car project. It thinks that means a re-start on a project that will eventually result in an Apple self-driving car. However, the New York Times sacrificed its credibility on reporting Apple as a company a long time ago. You don’t “reboot” a project and then make it go on the same tracks that it was before; you also don’t lay off most of the staff.

What is more likely is that Apple is going to copy Google’s business plan and develop technology platform and software suite to enable or empower self-driving cars and hope to sell it later. While that might give Apple a product to sell, there is no guarantee that the car companies will listen any more than they do now. If the car companies have technology coming from Google, Nvidia and the rest, why on earth would they want to use stuff from Jobs’ Mob?

Jaguar Land Rover said it will create a fleet of more than 100 research vehicles over the next four years as part of a cunning plan to test autonomous and connected technology.

The first models will hit the streets later this year.

Jaguar Land Rover is the UK's biggest car maker and knocks out expensive Range Rovers, 4x4s and sportier luxury motors. The initial models will be driven on a new 41-mile (66 km) test route on motorways and urban roads near its headquarters and plants in central England.

Britain announced plans in March to test cars on motorways and launched a consultation on Monday to change insurance and motoring rules as it pursues plans to allow the public to use driverless cars on the streets by 2020.

Jaguar Land Rover's Head of Research Tony Harper said the firm's technology, which includes a three-dimensional advanced view of the street ahead to recognise barriers and radio signal communication between cars, could reduce hazards.

"Our connected and automated technology could help improve traffic flow, cut congestion and reduce the potential for accidents," Harper said.

Traditional automakers face competition from rivals such as Tesla and technology firms such as Alphabet Inc unit Google, which wants eventually to be able to deploy fully autonomous vehicles without human controls. At the moment driverless car testing will need a person to be present and able to take control should the need arise, the UK Department for Transport has said.

MediaTek's R&D teams are working with European-based car vendors to develop the company's automotive electronics and virtual reality (VR) offerings.

Digitimes claims that having developed SoCs for smartphones, mobile devices, and connected home appliances, MediaTek is stepping up development of chips solutions for auto electronics and VR applications.

MediaTek is focused on in-car entertainment systems, and will be using its partnership with China-based NavInfo, a digital mapping service provider to help out.

NavInfo will sell subsidiary AutoChips (Hefei) and will also form a strategic alliance in which MediaTek will make an investment of US$100 million.MediaTek will be developing VR for handsets and will support Google's Daydream VR platform.

Meanwhile the team is flat out improving its IC solutions for Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable device applications. It is pretty sure that this will become the third largest segment after mobile devices and connected home appliances such as digital TVs. In fact the only two areas that MediaTek does not appear interested in is server and augmented reality (AR) applications.

Jen-Hsun Huang confirmed in company's financial Q2 conference call that the Tegra found its way under the bonnet of 30 million cars.

Infotainment, which is a mix of an information system device and entertainment, has been a money spinner for Nvidia which managed to grab a large portion of this market.

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang has confirmed that Nvidia's automotive business grew 70 percent year over year.

More than 50 automotive companies are interesting in Nvidia's deep leaning capable Drive PX platform in order to make their car more autonomous. Sources close to Nvidia told Fudzilla they expect to see totally autonomous driving cars by 2020. These would be very expensive cars and beyond most people's price range.

Jen-Hsun believes that the car business is going to continue to grow for Nvidia in the later part of the year and that explosive growth should happen over the next several years. In May we meet with some Qualcomm executives in Automotive business and they said something similar. It is planning to aggressively enter infotainment business with quite a few design wins. This will mean Nvidia will have some competition in early 2016.

Margins in automotive business are high but they are directly linked to the number of cars sold in a specific market. The autonomous driving and the data procession from sensor fusion is one of the keys to Nvidia's automotive growth. The Tegra processors have to process images and data from sensors such as lidar, radar or sonar to give a car a clear picture where it is going.

Nvidia had a record Q4 and record financial year but tanking Tegra did not really help.

According to Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Tegra sales shrunk 15 percent from the financial Q4 2014 a year ago.C olette Kress, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Nvidia claimed the reason was that "smartphone and tablet designs reached the end of their product life cycle."

However there is a new trend, the revenue increased on the auto infotainment systems and Colette said that investors that this market more than doubled. Nvidia saw increase in earnings from Shield devices too, but did not say much more about it.

It looks like Tegra's future is under a car's bonnet. Nvidia reported better than 80 percent growth during the year. More than 7.5 million cars with Nvidia technology are now on the road and a year ago Nvidia had only 4.7 million cars. This is where most of Tegra money was coming from.

Nvidia has introduced Nvidia Drive. NVIDIA Drive is the first car computing platform, using advances in deep learning and there is no doubt that this segment will become big in the months to come. We will tell you more about the Drive later, but the technology looks great and will help the self-driving car's future. Nvidia Drive can use data from inexpensive cameras and help auto vendors to make a self-driving car. This is cheaper than with Lidar Light Detection and ranging rotating device that sits on top of the self-driving cars.

Nvidia Drive and the commitment to automotive makes sense is that margins are probably much bigger than in the overcrowded phone and tablet market. The car industry can provide users for Nvidia and the technology inside of the car is just a small fraction of the total price. We see an infotainment becoming a standard option for most manufacturers and more cars. Apparently people will want to connect their phone to their infotainment and play Spotify music. Maybe in the future you could use your LTE connected car and stream Netflix to the rear seats as well, this is what we expect from the future. This is the sort of thing that Tegra eats for breakfast.